


Five blue pills and Castiel was flying

by ameliaspunkcomplex



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Again, Angst, Croatoan!Verse, Episode: s05e04 The End, Whump, kind of, what a surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 11:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliaspunkcomplex/pseuds/ameliaspunkcomplex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel could feel the energy ebbing from the Earth and he knew they were leaving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five blue pills and Castiel was flying

**Author's Note:**

> Just quickly - I'm aware that in Canon, the loss of his Grace was a slow, subtle process. But I played with it a bit and dramatised it for the slight Whump factor, so please let me know what you think :) Yes, I adore writing End!Verse. No, I will not ever stop.

Castiel could feel the energy ebbing from the Earth and he knew they were leaving.

 Piece by piece it left him; and Castiel realised that in a sense, his Grace wasn’t just _his,_ but this shared perception - this incredible, encompassing warmth that even when he’d rebelled and revoked, had run through him and all of his brothers and sisters like a single, pulsing vein tying them together. He realised it when they abandoned the planet, one by one, and the golden tendrils shrunk into the shadows with them until all that was left of a roaring fire was this tiny flame inside him. The bridges were burned. He knew there were no second chances.

He’d felt the deafening silence of the angels when he stepped out of his cabin one night to walk in the woods. Surrounding himself with nature was a thread that Castiel clung to with desperation, pretending that his weight wasn’t too much, pretending it wouldn’t snap. Beneath the foliage of the pine trees, under the blanket of stars, Castiel could look around at his Father’s creations and pretend that He was still there, that He still loved and forgave and _cared._ But maybe even the forest knew the angels had left because they were silent and unmoving and sad; even before, amongst all the post-apocalyptic chaos, the trees had continues to dance and whisper with the energy of the Heavens and with the little sparks of hope. But on the night that Castiel sat quietly on the mossy floor, they just reflected the littered streets that he walked; cold, distant, stoic if not for the smoke that still blossomed from wreckages weeks old, fires still burning from some infinite source of oxygen Castiel wished he could tap. Now the air was thick and polluted. On that cold, windy night – air biting at Castiel with frosty fangs as he tried to forget that he shouldn’t be moved by it, shouldn’t have goose bumps and an elegant shiver – he could taste the bitterness in the air and he knew the destruction had reached his serenity.

Every angel leaving marked the milestones of holy divinity gushing from his pores in weeping floods. First Castiel became hungry. Then, just as he was becoming accustomed to the never-sated growling in the pit of his stomach, he became heavy lidded and informed Dean with embarrassment that he needed sleep. It wasn’t long before a close call with a Croat informed him that he had been stripped of his ‘smiting-rights,’ as Dean had put it. And then the night that the last angel had come, Castiel had shuddered in a fleshy, vulnerable, undignified way because it was _cold_ and he felt like putting on a coat was something symbolic as to accepting his mortality. A human body that bruised under light touch and snapped with too much strain. Bones that ached with no real reason.

Castiel had sensed how monumental that night was when he’d stepped out of his door; which, at the time, had held heavy oak in its frame instead of beads; smelt like rain and dirt instead of incense and other, less becoming, billowing smoke; housed a somewhat clean bed that was home to only him. The smouldering wick that was left of his Grace had pulsed with the energy of another, like a shining beacon across the desolate globe, and although there was nothing Castiel wanted more than to feel the embrace of one of his brethren – hell, it could have been Zachariah and Castiel would have run to him with open arms – he couldn’t shift the deep unease that settled as he placed himself delicately on the springy ground. There had to be a reason.

“Castiel,” the disembodied voice whispered although it wasn’t really necessary, because even sitting cross-legged with his back turned Castiel could feel the shattered remnants of his Grace beating in his chest like a desperate, battered butterfly seeking the solace of the other. He turned around slowly – still sitting – to peer over his shoulder at the tall, olive-skinned angel with wide, grey eyes that looked scared to hope.  
“Ramiel,” he said courteously, standing up to clasp a hand firmly around his brother’s shoulder, smiling sadly. “It’s good to see you.”  
“You know why I am here?”  
“Could there be any other reason?” But it was more of a statement than a question.  
Ramiel tried to smile but it looked weary; he was no powerful warrior, and the trip to Earth must have drained him so with all of the paving stones cracked.  
“You shouldn’t have come,” Castiel murmured. “You’re drained.”  
“It had to be done,” he replied simply.  
They looked at each other for a moment, exchanging thousands of words in glances as Castiel could feel his Grace; the tiniest of flames reignited, screaming for the other, reaching out, telling him to go, So he said, “I’m not leaving,” both to Ramiel and as reassurance to himself.  
“You should,” Ramiel replied, but it sounded more like an empty wish than a command. “They’d welcome you back with open arms. All Earthly sins have been forgiven. _You_ have been forgiven Castiel.” When the other said nothing, he continued; “Come home. Leave this broken world. These people aren’t your family Castiel; _we_ are your family.”

“In theory,” Castiel replied, rather harshly, because in all honesty the angels had been nothing like the family Dean and Sam had taught him about; his yearning for them was purely from instinct, raw emotion born of something like chemical instinct. But they’d burned him and marred him and he’d made his decision long before he realised it wouldn’t be long before they sent one to collect him.  
Ramiel studied him; searchingly, and he apparently didn’t like what he saw because he sighed heavily. “The humans. You’re definitely on their side now; is that it?”  
“I’ve made my decision.”  
“You’ve thrown your lot in with these defective-!”  
“Stop,” Castiel said evenly, holding his hand palm-out in a passive gesture. “You’re the first I’ve spoken to in a long time, brother, and I know you’ll be the last. No fighting, please. I’ve made my decision,” he re-iterated.  
“You’re staying,” Ramiel echoed hollowly.  
No reply.  
“You know what my leaving means, Castiel,” he continued quietly. “The Host is leaving now, forever. The Host is leaving _you_ on this burning planet.”  
“I know,” Castiel said with a solemn nod, and then there was a returned warm hand on his shoulder. “Goodbye brother.”  
“Goodbye Castiel.”

There was a moment of peace between the symbolic fluttering of wings and the end – a moment that still had the aftertaste of something holy for Castiel to grab a hold of, a shadow of a shadow of the Host’s presence on Earth that filled him and broke him all at the same time.  
And maybe a human would have found it eerie  
 _not human, not Castiel, not yet -  
_ the way that the wind gushed and whistled through the trees, shaking up leafs, littering the ground – Castiel thanks the extended second of silence because he _knew_ they were gone.  
They’d left him.  
But the moment _it_ left – completely and irrevocably – was marked as the bubbles of Grace rose in Castiel until they were choking him, fanned into a poisonous flame that clogged his throat with thick smoke until he dropped to his knees and had to open his mouth to scream. An indefinite amount that poured from him, so much blinding white light that obliterated the forest and crept into every crevasse and crack of every tree, bursting out of every orifice, screeching, and Castiel didn’t know he had it left in him, but miles upon miles of his Heavenly purpose ripped through his pores and tore his skin to shreds. To anybody else, he would have looked like pieces of flesh amongst a ball of ethereal fire.  
 _You’re still whole,_ the neglected voice of reason said.  
But the pain – Castiel had always known pain as temporary, something to be tolerated and overcome, but this was engulfing and terrifyingly endless, internal and external until he couldn’t differentiate between the fire in his throat or the sheer power of the white shooting from his wide eyes, gaping mouth, hands and feet and skin – maybe it was on par, or slightly stronger than the acidic holes digging into his shoulder blades where his wings had been, the only tangible retrospect of his Grace, being ripped from him by the invisible hand of the departing Host.

Castiel screamed until his throat was red-raw, screamed even after the last of it left him, screamed in pain and how empty he felt and how even with the sleeping and eating and firearms, he had been so _warm_ and he only realised that as he screamed, desolate and freezing inside. Castiel screamed until the forest returned to the dim shade of the moon and he fell into the grass, screamed until his eyes lulled back into his head and his mouth fell shut of its own accord.

When Castiel stopped screaming, he was in a bed.

***

“Woah,” the blurry figure said softly when Castiel tried to sit up; placing a gentle but firm hand on his chest to keep him still. “Just take it easy.”

So Castiel sunk back into the creaky mattress, letting the damp pillow engulf his skull as the pain flared up again. It was nothing more than a diluted shadow of the real pain; but Castiel seemed to have blanked that from his memory – and with good reason – so, thankfully, he couldn’t really remember how that felt. What he could feel was the pounding inside his head, the invisible gauges in his shoulders smouldering, the burning in his throat and chest. He had to squint against the light of the flickering ceiling bulb, because his sight was as raw as his skin felt. When he adjusted, with furious blinking and a hand pinched to his temple, he saw Dean towering over him with a thin smile.  
“Mornin’ sunshine.”  
It was, apparently morning, because rays of sunlight pierced the cracks in the deteriorating shutters and bombarded his tender senses. There was a crack in the door that a breeze rolled through – in another lifetime, he would have appreciate how warm it was, how it smelt like spring. But this was Castiel’s life and a terrible one at that, so all he noted was that it had to have been late at night – or early in the morning, when he’d taken his purposeful stroll. Now, it was somewhere between late morning and fresh midday.  
“I’m alive,” Castiel groaned, his voice chalky. The breath he took was ragged and scraped against his throat and he burst into a coughing fit, the tiniest splatter of blood landing on his shielding palm. Not enough to worry about. He was, indeed, alive.  
“Yeah,” Dean replied in a gravelly tone. “The woods north of perimeter just exploded with white light. When it died down, we heard a scream. And then we found you.”  
  
Castiel realised that he was drawing on his Grace to heal him, reaching into his soul but finding an empty cage that was pitch black and ached in longing. He reached in and came out empty, and then the pain hit him in fresh waves, both mentally and in the harshness of his headache  
 _human  
_ and the over-enthusiastic beating of his heart, smacking against his ribcage, pounding his broken bones.  
“The last angel came,” he whispered hoarsely. “The Host is gone, it-”  
Another bout of hacking coughs interrupted him and Castiel sat up, hunched over, as Dean gave his back a firm pat.  
“Chuck said,” he murmured. “He woke up around midnight and came to my cabin. Said something about the angels leaving. Told me you’d gone for a leisurely walk and when the lights went out in the forest, we might find you there.”  
“Might?”  
“We didn’t know if you would go with them, Cas.”  
  
“So he had a vision?” Castiel asked with weak optimism. “That’s a good sign, right?”  
“A dream,” Dean replied evenly. Realistically. “And you know it’s the first he’s had in a year, Cas. It might have just slipped through the cracks.”  
“Angel radio,” Castiel said disjointedly, and laughed weakly to himself.  
“Chuck lucked out on the frequency,” Dean agreed with a grimace.  
Castiel looked up at Dean; at the tired eyes, dirty face lined and weighted and dark and sunken. He looked far too old, far too tired. Then again, nobody at Camp Chitaqua was exactly _Miss America._ “How is he right now?” he asked quietly.  
Dean looked down, folded his arms. “He’s got a headache. The whole shebang. I think him and ole’ Jack Daniels are in his cabin.”  
Castiel nodded solemnly and neither of them said anything for a minute while the drumming in his head reached a drowning crescendo in time with the fire in his shoulders; his bones rattled excitedly and Castiel frowned, pinched his forehead with his hand, couldn’t suppress a pained groan.

“Hey, you okay?” Dean asked worriedly.  
  
Castiel frowned again, opened his mouth to speak and closed it. The question seemed so ridiculous that he wanted to glare at Dean, to scream  
 _until his throat was red-raw  
_ at him, to blaspheme and throw wild, weak punches. “ _Am I okay?_ ” he wanted to cry. “ _I have officially reached the lowest point in my existence. I have fallen, irreversibly, and I have had my angelic purpose ripped from me. I have been battered and abandoned and now I am a walking example of the vulnerability of humanity. Am I okay? What the hell do you think? Dean!”  
_ But he couldn’t describe it. He couldn’t describe the pain of something that powerful, couldn’t bring it down to base level, because although Dean Winchester could probably teach Castiel a few things about family he had never experienced this _shared identity,_ he didn’t know what it felt like to lose not just one brother, but a thousand more, and each a fraction of your soul in the process. Castiel couldn’t explain the bone-bending _agony_ of something that metaphysical, so he said the first thing that came to mind; “I’m just in pain.” as though it were that simple.  
“Everything hurts. Losing your Grace isn’t really a pleasant experience.”

Dean nodded and looked like he was going to say something for a moment, but he unfolded his arms and strode from the room with purpose, returning only minutes later with a capsule of blue pills. About ten rattled in the plastic.  
“Heads up,” he said as he threw them to Castiel who caught them with shaky hands, reminded with painful abruptness of the last time Dean had said that to him; a box of aspirin, because it was the first time Castiel had ever drunk and was about twenty times what any normal person could withstand. That was when Castiel had realised his father didn’t care.  
“I had to nab these from medical, and you know the price of drugs these days so don’t tell anyone,” he said, gnawing at his lower lip as he spoke as if he knew that Castiel was lying but _be damned_ if Dean was going to be the one to push him. The elder Winchester wasn’t exactly the poster-child for sharing and caring. “They won’t knock you out, but they’ll numb the pain. Just take one, okay? That should cover it.” He paused. “I’m gonna go check on Chuck. Yell if you need anything, okay Cas?”  
“Got it.”

The door swung shut behind the hunter and Castiel peered at the tin in his hand, the label pronouncing some scientific name that didn’t really explain much to him. So he popped the lid and tipped one into his hand, tilting his head and throwing back the shiny plastic, washing it down with a gulp of the dirty water from the glass on his bedside table. Then, he sat and waited.

It wasn’t long before Castiel felt the effects; the drumming stopped, he could almost feel his pulse slow. Pain was ushered into the furthermost, darkest corner of his mind and Castiel smiled to himself, shaking the capsule in thanks. He stopped; glanced again at the blue tablets, remembering Dean’s advice but wondering what would happen under one more, two more. If he was floating now, how long until he could soar?

Castiel found out. It took five blue pills until he rocked in his bed, insistent that he could feel the winds of Heaven brushing against his cheek, the sun’s rays shining on his like they did _up there,_ not a stranded ball of fire but softer fragments that danced and glittered and shone magnificently. A sunrise in Heaven was like a Picaso take on an Earthly view; but it had an fragile beauty to it and Castiel gazed, slack jawed, in wonderment at what he didn’t realise was the dim, faulty light bulb planted in the centre of the ceiling. Five blue pills brought Castiel comfort. Five blue pills and he was ignorant of the burning, the shaking, of his feet planted squarely and irreversibly on Earth, ignorant of his humanity and physicality.  
  
The ex-angel was vaguely aware of another coming to check on him, but the person – the woman, Risa, obviously sent by Dean because she was one of many in camp who was uncomfortable around him and would be the last to volunteer – backed away with a contorted expression when he pointed at the fractured sun, told her not to look for too long because the beauty would melt her eyeballs. He laughed manically at that.  
  
He was comfortably numb, for once. There was a human saying that found him, found his cognitive thought even in the blankets of chemical substance – ignorance is bliss.  
  
Five blue pills, and Castiel was flying.

 


End file.
